Oddworld Stranger's Wrath

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Oddworld breaks rank from its past to give gamers a wild, beautiful and exceptional action experience.

By Douglass C. Perry

Up until its latest effort, Oddworld's games have predominantly leaned toward simple action-puzzle titles. They're somewhat non-traditional titles filled with beautiful backgrounds and grotesque yet adorable characters, and they're heavy on language and attitude. Oddworld Stranger's Wrath marks the developer's exploration into an entirely different arena. Stranger is predominantly a first-person shooter that eschews the Oddworld games of the past. Stranger offers gamers a first- and third-person action-platform hybrid, starring a new lead character to set the pace for Lorne Lanning's ongoing Oddworld universe.

The change is welcome. Munch's Oddysee might have retained some fans' interest, but it didn't grow the Xbox market base at the system's launch, and it certainly didn't sell as well as the previous two PlayStation 2D titles. In fact, in most ways it was considered a failure. Lanning's new game shows innovation and experimentation in the first-person shooter genre, it expands Oddworld, and more importantly, it shows Oddworld's got legs -- specifically, it conveys Lanning's ability as a designer to adapt, evolve and change with the times.

Story and Perspective Following the company's three previous titles, Stranger offers a story told over the course of about 16- to 18-hours. This one is longer and more varied that the others, relying less on language puzzles and light strategy and more on skill-heavy shooting and light platforming. You start off as Stranger, a tough-as-nails bounty hunter modeled after the Clint Eastwood character born from Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Your real goal is initially hidden, but on the surface Stranger's mission is to earn enough money as a bounty hunter to pay for an operation. What kind of operation, we aren't told. But its significance is huge, and about halfway through the game a huge twist of fate alters the story and even the gameplay to a large degree. I won't spoil it for you here, but you'll want to play it all the way through thanks to a largely interesting, and yes, oddly compelling story.

If you've played the previous Oddworld games, Stranger comes as a surprise. FPS? Yes; a first-person shooter with a distinctly fluid camera mechanic. Aside from the new setting and lead character, gamers will instantly notice the ease with which they can change between the first-person and the third-person view. At first, players might think the game works equally well in both views at any point in the action, be it platforming, shooting, or simply running about. The game offers the ability to play in either perspective 99% of the time (with the exception of some fixed camera angles scattered here and there), but most likely, you'll come to realize it's best to use the first-person view while fighting and the third-person view while platforming and traveling.

Fighting while in third-person is far less efficient and way more frustrating than you can imagine. The slow moving camera doesn't respond fast enough, and the controls actually offer a head-butt and spin move in place of the shooting mechanics. They're novel for a bit, but no match for the sleek first-person shooting mechanic. Jumping, exploring and moving across the landscape in third-person, however, works perfectly. You avoid the whole Turok effect (platforming in first-person), the camera speed matches the pace of exploration, and when Stranger runs fast enough across a flat surface, he'll accelerate into a nifty gallop.